Not long ago, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) made headlines with its “Massive Cancer Information Giveaway“: a gift of over 300 cell lines derived from a wide variety of tumors, including breast, prostate, lung and ovarian cancers. The cell lines were made freely available to cancer researchers via the National Cancer Institute’s caBIG, with the goal of “crowdsourcing” the search for predictive biomarkers, making clinical trials shorter and, ultimately, getting drugs more quickly to people suffering from disease.

Now Galapagos NV, a Belgium-based drug discovery company, is following in GSK’s footsteps. The company is making freely available several proprietary databases of information about small molecules and proteins through the EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI). With funding from the Wellcome Trust, EMBL-EBI is returning the data to the public domain — precisely what we recommend in the Science Commons Open Access Data Protocol.

“This makes the scientific data that Galapagos has gathered an extraordinary gift — not just to science, but to open science,” says John Wilbanks, who leads Science Commons. “Returning the data to the public domain removes the legal barriers that prevent us from making full use of the latest technologies for data integration and analysis. The Galapagos data can now be used in ways no one can anticipate — the very definition of innovation.”

Um Creative Commons im deutschsprachigen Raum bekannter zu machen, haben wir eine Spendenkampagne gestartet. Damit wollen wir Flyer, Aufkleber, Broschüren und sonstige Aktionen finanzieren. Für die Kampagne brauchen wir Hilfe:

Wir freuen uns über Banner und Widgets, um die Aktion bekannter zu machen. Auf der internationalen CC-Webseite gibt es hochauflösende Grafiken der üblichen CC-Elemente.

- D-Day Salon 준비 
 오랜 시간 동안 ccMixter Korea발룬티어들이 준비해온 이번 CC Salon. 당일 날 역시 이른 시간부터 공연장 곳곳에서 발룬티어들의 손길이 분주히 오갔다.

- 카운트다운!
게스트들이 하나 둘 도착하면서 공연을 위한 본격적인 준비가 시작되었다. 게스트들은 공연 리허설을, 발룬티어들은 관객들 맞을 준비 등 이곳저곳에서 사람들이 바쁘게 움직이면서 공연을 위해 달리고 있었다.

 - 4th CC Salon 'Mix It Up', 막을 올리다. 
 7시 10분, 완성도 높은 공연을 위한 리허설로 인해 조금 늦은 이 때 CC Salon의 막이 올랐다. 공연장 입구에서부터 줄 서서 기다려준 관객들이 CCK에서 준비한 선물을 받고 차례차례 입장하면서 공연장 안에는 은근한 긴장감과 열기로 차기 시작했다. 이윽고 오프닝 영상과 함께 공연이 시작되었다. 'Mix It Up' START !

- 열기가 가득한 공연, 그리고 ccMixter Korea! 
 장기하와 얼굴들의 멋진 무대와 함께 시작한 공연은 샛별, DJ JUICE, 넋업샨&강산 여울, DJ 짱가, 네바다#51로 이어가면서 그 열기가 점점 달아올랐다. 각 게스트들은 관객들과 가까이에서 호흡하며 점점 공연장 내 분위기를 최고조로 끌어올렸고, 관객들 역시 적극적으로 환호하며 공연을 즐겼다. Salon을 준비하고, 또 응원해주기 위해 찾아준 발룬티어들도 관객들과 어우러져 즐기는 모습을 보였다. 각 공연 중간마다 우리가 관객들에게 전달하고 싶은 메시지를 담은 영상을 보여주었으며, 아티스트들 역시 각 공연마다 우리 CC의 이야기를 전달해주었다. 공연의 마지막에는 아티스트들이 이번 CC Salon을 위해 준비한 Jam 공연이 펼쳐졌다. ‘Mix It Up’의 뜻을 관객들에게 공연을 통해 알리고 함께 즐길 수 있도록 특별히 준비된 것이었다. 이 특별한 무대에 관객들은 더욱 환호해주었으며 이와 더불어 공연의 끝을 아쉬워해줬다. 이렇게 4th CC Salon의 화려한 막이 내려졌다.

- 공연의 열기가 휩쓸고 간 공연장.
 공연이 끝난 후에도 많은 관객들이 아쉬움에 남아 좋아하는 게스트들과 대화를 하거나 사진을 찍으며 공연장을 떠나지 못했고, 아티스트들 역시 잠시 숨을 돌리며 자신들을 찾아주는 관객들을 맞이했다. 발룬티어들은 돌아가는 관객들을 배웅하고, 장내를 정리하는 등 이번 Salon의 마지막을 향해 또 다시 달렸다.

- 모두가 즐거웠던 그 순간을 기억하며
 CC Salon이 가져다 준 약 2시간 동안의 열기는 여전히 남아있다. ccMixter Korea사이트 리뉴얼 오픈을 기념하기 위해 야심차게 준비해 온 CC Salon, 4번째 이야기. 준비하면서 즐거웠던 만큼 지치기도 했었지만 지나고 보니 웃으면서 서로의 어깨를 토닥여 주고 있었다. 사람들과 한 자리에서 호흡하며 즐거운 시간을 공유했기에 더욱 뜻 깊었던 자리었던 CC Salon. 부디 Salon을 찾아줬던 사람들이 우리 사이트도 궁금해 주었길, 그리고 앞으로의 ccMixter Korea와 다음 Salon도 기대해 주길!

열기가 가득했던 2008년 7월 13일이 궁금하시다면, 함께 호흡한 게스트들이 궁금하시다면, 우리의 바뀐 모습이 궁금하시다면 주저 말고 놀러와 주세요. 항상 기다리고 있습니다.
www.ccmixter.or.kr 

Zum Release der deutschen Creative Commons Lizenzen Version 3.0 habe ich mit John Weitzmann ein Interview zu den Neuerungen geführt. John ist der “Legal-Lead” bei Creative Commons Deutschland, während ich für den “Public-Lead” verantwortlich bin. Kurz zusammengefasst beschäftigt er sich mit allen juristischen Fragen und ich kümmere mich um die Öffentlichkeitsarbeit. In den letzten Monaten hat John zusammen mit vielen Helfern den Portierungsprozess auf die Version 3.0 koordiniert. In dem Gespräch erklärt er die vielen Änderungen gegenüber der Version 2.0 und beschreibt die Prozesse, die zu einem Lizenz-Update führen. Es ist etwas mehr Jura-Talk als sonst in den Netzpolitik-Podcasts, aber wir haben versucht, alles möglichst Praxis-nah mit Beispielen zu beschreiben.

Der Podcast ist ca. 22 Minuten lang und liegt als MP3 und OGG zum Download bereit.

Download audio file (netzpolitik-podcast_creative_commons_release_30.mp3)

Die deutschen Creative Commons-Lizenzen sind heute in der Version 3.0 erschienen. Sie wurden einerseits an die internationale 3.0-Version angepasst und andererseits an aktuelle Urheberrechtsentwicklungen in Deutschland nach dem zweiten Korb.

Ein grosser Dank geht an John Weitzmann, der in den letzten Monaten die vielen juristischen Fragen koordiniert hat. Wir haben dazu auch eine Pressemitteilung von Creative Commons Deutschland veröffentlicht: Deutsche Creative Commons-Lizenzen in Version 3.0 verfügbar.

“Die Arbeit hat sich gelohnt”, so John Weitzmann zum fertig gestellten deutschen Lizenzenset, “denn nun stehen auch den CC-Begeisterten hierzulande wieder Lizenzen zur Verfügung, die auf der Höhe der nationalen Rechtslage und dem letzten Stand der internationalen Weiterentwicklung der CCPL sind.” Die Version 3.0 ist eine komplette Neuübersetzung der US-Originale.

Die wichtigsten Neuerungen der 3.0er Lizenzen:

- Sui-Generis-Datenbankenrechte (in Deutschland die §§ 87a folgende des Urheberrechtsgesetzes) werden nun explizit in die Lizenzen einbezogen und der Verzicht auf sie erklärt. Dadurch soll verhindert werden, dass die über CC-Lizenzen gewährten Freiheiten über den Umweg der Aufnahme in Datenbanken ausgehebelt werden können.

- Nachdem zum 1. Januar 2008 auch nach deutschem Urheberrecht die Möglichkeit besteht, in Voraus für noch nicht bekannte Nutzungsarten umfassende Nutzungsrechte einzuräumen, ist dies auch in die portierten CC-3.0-Lizenzen aufgenommen worden.

- Weiterhin werden nun ausdrücklich auch gesetzliche Vergütungsansprüche und Zwangslizenzen behandelt. Dazu wird klargestellt, dass bzgl. unverzichtbarer Ansprüche auch ihre Geltendmachung durchaus vorbehalten wird. In den Lizenzen mit Nicht-kommerziell-Einschränkung wird noch einmal deutlich darauf hingewiesen, dass bei lizenzwidrigen kommerzielle Verwendungen auch verzichtbare Ansprüche und solche aus Zwangslizenzen ausdrücklich vorbehalten bleiben. Hintergrund ist, dass auch Verwendern von CC-Lizenzen zumindest die Möglichkeit offen stehen sollte, an Abgaben zu partizipieren, die ohnehin anfallen.

- Die Lizenzvariante “Namensnennung - Weitergabe unter gleichen Bedingungen” (abgekürzt BY-SA), die zusammen mit der Variante “Namensnennung” (BY) von der Free Software Foundation als “freie Lizenz” anerkannt ist, lässt nun im Rahmen der Weitergabe ein Verlassen des CC-Lizenzmodells zugunsten jedes anderen, gleich wirkenden Lizenzmodells zu. Dadurch soll mehr Kompatibilität mit anderen alternativen Lizenzmodellen erreicht und somit verhindert werden, dass frei lizenzierte Inhalte in einem Lizenzmodell “gefangen” bleiben, was bisher meist der Fall war und ganz klar den Zwecken alternativer Lizenzierung zuwider läuft.

- Die neuen Texte sind bewusst so strukturiert worden, dass die Lizenzen nun noch besser als früher auch für solche Inhalte verwendet werden können, die nicht alle Voraussetzungen eines “Werkes” im Sinne des deutschen Urheberrechtsgesetzes erfüllen. Dazu wurde u. a. der gesetzlich definierte Begriff der “Bearbeitung” im Definitionsteil der Lizenzen mit anderen unter den nicht gesetzlich definierten Begriff “Abwandlung” gekapselt.

- Sprache und Begrifflichkeiten der Lizenzen wurden teilweise den einschlägigen internationalen Abkommen zum geistigen Eigentum angepasst. Durch diese und andere Maßnahmen soll die Durchsetzbarkeit der portierten Lizenzen für den Fall verbessert werden, dass sie vor Gerichten im Ausland behandelt werden.

Als nächstes wird sich das deutsche Creative Commons Projekt nun um neue Möglichkeiten der Vermittlung der Ideen hinter dem CC-Lizenzmodell kümmern und auf Arbeitsebene auch versuchen, den Dialog mit den Verwertungsgesellschaften wieder in Gang zu bringen.

Der Netzpolitik-Podcast 063 behandelt die Neuerungen nochmal ausführlich.

Am Freitag: Release-Party in Berlin

Am 25. Juli lädt Creative Commons Deutschland zu einer Party in die Berliner Netlabel-Bar breiPott ein. Das musikalische Rahmenprogramm werden verschiedene Berliner DJ-Künstler mit CC-lizenzierter Musik bestreiten. Die breiPott-Bar ist in der Skalitzerstrasse 81 in Berlin-Kreuzberg. Beginn ist 20 Uhr und der Eintritt ist frei.

Spenden für Creative Commons Deutschland:

Mit Release der dritten Version startet Creative Commons Deutschland eine Fundraising-Kampagne. „Mit Spendengeldern möchten wir die Öffentlichkeitsarbeit für Creative Commons in Deutschland ausbauen“, so Markus Beckedahl, Projektleiter Öffentlichkeitsarbeit bei Creative Commons Deutschland. Geplant sind u.a. Flyer, Aufklärungsbroschüren, Aufkleber und mehr Veranstaltungen. Spenden an den Legal Lead der Creative Commons Deutschland, die Europäische EDV-Akademie des Rechts, sind steuerlich absetzbar.

Zum heutigen Release der deutschen Creative Commons Lizenzen in der Version 3.0 haben wir die folgende Pressemitteilung veröffentlicht:

Deutsche Creative Commons-Lizenzen in Version 3.0 verfügbar // Aktuelle Anpassung der offenen Lizenzen

Die deutschen Creative Commons Lizenzen sind nun in der Version 3.0 erschienen. Damit wurden sie den internationalen Lizenzen den aktuellen Entwicklungen der Urheberrechtsreform entsprechend angepasst. Deutschen Urhebern steht so eine einfache und bewährte Möglichkeit zur Verfügung, ihre Rechte dem eigenen Willen entsprechend mit anderen zu teilen.

Die Portierung wurde im Auftrag der Europäischen EDV-Akademie des Rechts durch John Hendrik Weitzmann als Projektleiter Recht von Creative Commons Deutschland gemeinsam mit dem so genannten “Affiliate Team” durchgeführt, einer am Saarbrücker Institut für Rechtsinformatik angesiedelten Gruppe wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter, Studierender und Rechtspraktiker.

“Die Arbeit hat sich gelohnt”, so John Weitzmann zum fertig gestellten deutschen Lizenzenset, “denn nun stehen auch den CC-Begeisterten hierzulande wieder Lizenzen zur Verfügung, die auf der Höhe der nationalen Rechtslage und dem letzten Stand der internationalen Weiterentwicklung der CCPL sind.” Die Version 3.0 ist eine komplette Neuübersetzung der US-Originale.

Party zum Release:

Am 25. Juli lädt Creative Commons Deutschland zu einer Party in die Berliner Netlabel-Bar breiPott ein. Das musikalische Rahmenprogramm werden verschiedene Berliner DJ-Künstler mit CC-lizenzierter Musik bestreiten. Die breiPott-Bar ist in der Skalitzerstrasse 81 in Berlin-Kreuzberg. Beginn ist 20 Uhr und der Eintritt ist frei.

Spenden-Kampagne:

Mit Release der dritten Version startet Creative Commons Deutschland eine Fundraising-Kampagne. „Mit Spendengeldern möchten wir die Öffentlichkeitsarbeit für Creative Commons in Deutschland ausbauen“, so Markus Beckedahl, Projektleiter Öffentlichkeitsarbeit bei Creative Commons Deutschland. Geplant sind u.a. Flyer, Aufklärungsbroschüren, Aufkleber und mehr Veranstaltungen. Spenden an den Legal Lead der Creative Commons Deutschland, die Europäische EDV-Akademie des Rechts, sind steuerlich absetzbar.

Die wichtigsten Neuerungen der 3.0er Lizenzen im Überblick:

- Sui-Generis-Datenbankenrechte (in Deutschland die §§ 87a folgende des Urheberrechtsgesetzes) werden nun explizit in die Lizenzen einbezogen und der Verzicht auf sie erklärt. Dadurch soll verhindert werden, dass die über CC-Lizenzen gewährten Freiheiten über den Umweg der Aufnahme in Datenbanken ausgehebelt werden können.

- Nachdem zum 1. Januar 2008 auch nach deutschem Urheberrecht die Möglichkeit besteht, in Voraus für noch nicht bekannte Nutzungsarten umfassende Nutzungsrechte einzuräumen, ist dies auch in die portierten CC-3.0-Lizenzen aufgenommen worden.

- Weiterhin werden nun ausdrücklich auch gesetzliche Vergütungsansprüche und Zwangslizenzen behandelt. Dazu wird klargestellt, dass bzgl. unverzichtbarer Ansprüche auch ihre Geltendmachung durchaus vorbehalten wird. In den Lizenzen mit Nicht-kommerziell-Einschränkung wird noch einmal deutlich darauf hingewiesen, dass bei lizenzwidrigen kommerzielle Verwendungen auch verzichtbare Ansprüche und solche aus Zwangslizenzen ausdrücklich vorbehalten bleiben. Hintergrund ist, dass auch Verwendern von CC-Lizenzen zumindest die Möglichkeit offen stehen sollte, an Abgaben zu partizipieren, die ohnehin anfallen.

- Die Lizenzvariante “Namensnennung - Weitergabe unter gleichen Bedingungen” (abgekürzt BY-SA), die zusammen mit der Variante “Namensnennung” (BY) von der Free Software Foundation als “freie Lizenz” anerkannt ist, lässt nun im Rahmen der Weitergabe ein Verlassen des CC-Lizenzmodells zugunsten jedes anderen, gleich wirkenden Lizenzmodells zu. Dadurch soll mehr Kompatibilität mit anderen alternativen Lizenzmodellen erreicht und somit verhindert werden, dass frei lizenzierte Inhalte in einem Lizenzmodell “gefangen” bleiben, was bisher meist der Fall war und ganz klar den Zwecken alternativer Lizenzierung zuwider läuft.

- Die neuen Texte sind bewusst so strukturiert worden, dass die Lizenzen nun noch besser als früher auch für solche Inhalte verwendet werden können, die nicht alle Voraussetzungen eines “Werkes” im Sinne des deutschen Urheberrechtsgesetzes erfüllen. Dazu wurde u. a. der gesetzlich definierte Begriff der “Bearbeitung” im Definitionsteil der Lizenzen mit anderen unter den nicht gesetzlich definierten Begriff “Abwandlung” gekapselt.

- Sprache und Begrifflichkeiten der Lizenzen wurden teilweise den einschlägigen internationalen Abkommen zum geistigen Eigentum angepasst. Durch diese und andere Maßnahmen soll die Durchsetzbarkeit der portierten Lizenzen für den Fall verbessert werden, dass sie vor Gerichten im Ausland behandelt werden.

Als nächstes wird sich das deutsche Creative Commons Projekt nun um neue Möglichkeiten der Vermittlung der Ideen hinter dem CC-Lizenzmodell kümmern und auf Arbeitsebene auch versuchen, den Dialog mit den Verwertungsgesellschaften wieder in Gang zu bringen.

Im Netzpolitik-Podcast 063 stellen Markus Beckedahl und John Weitzmann die Änderungen ausführlich vor.

Creative Commons has announced the release of two very important tools for the developer community. These tools, liblicense and LicenseChooser.js, provide simple and standard ways of reading or writing license information to a variety of files.

liblicense is specifically geared towards the desktop application developer who wants to use license information in media files but does not want to implement the low-level code themselves. LicenseChooser.js, however, is designed to be used in web applications such as a media sharing site for users’ pictures or music.

Both of these software packages aim to make the lives of the developers’ easier. One way in which that is accomplished is that these tools will continue to be updated as new versions of Creative Commons licenses are released thus moving the burden from the developer to Creative Commons.

There will be a public demonstration of liblicense at OSCON on July 24th. For more information see the Press Release.

A Google twofer for Creative Commons today!

Google Knol opened today, intended to be a platform for authoritative articles about a specific topics, also known as knols, by a created single author or collaboratively. The default license for a new knol is CC Attribution. A creator can also choose CC Attribution-NonCommercial or All Rights Reserved.

Separately, Google Code added an option for software projects to specify a separate license for content associated with a software project — CC Attribution or CC Attribution-ShareAlike. This does not change Google Code’s selection of free and open source software licenses for source code. (Note: Creative Commons also recommends and uses free and open source software licenses such as the GNU GPL for source code.)

It’s really great to see both Google Knol and Google Code launching with and launching support for CC licensing on the same day, and interesting how their choice of licenses to offer differs. Knol defaults to the most liberal CC license, but allows authors to choose a more restrictive (NonCommercial) license, or even the most restrictive option — no public license.

As prior to its launch Knol was often speculatively compared to Wikipedia, it should be noted that the default Knol license (CC BY) could permit using Knol content in Wikipedia (with attribution of course), but knols under more restrictive options could not be incorporated into Wikipedia. On the other hand Wikipedia content could not be incorporated into knols (except in the case of fair use of course), even in the case Wikipedia migrates to CC BY-SA — Knol doesn’t offer a copyleft license.

The two CC licenses offered by Google Code are those that are in the spirit of free and open source software, befitting Google Code’s user base — free and open source software developers.

Photo by Petri Tuohimaa for GMRI, CC BY-NC-ND
“Sarah on a beach near Portland, Maine looking for two species of invasive marine crabs – Carcinus maenas (European green crab) and Hemigrapsus sanguineus (Asian shore crabs).”

In April, I had a chance to meet with Sarah Kirn, Program Manager of Vital Signs, a field and inquiry based science education program at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. The meeting took place in our sunny San Francisco office while Sarah was in town for the week. She marveled at the weather, her native state being Maine, where she has worked with the Gulf of Maine Research Institute since 2002. She explained that the Vital Signs program itself actually started in 1999. Back in 1999, Vital Signs was using Apple E-mates, something which, at my age, I’ve never heard of, much less used. The following are excerpts from our meeting, along with some recent edits over email.

I might have used it, I said. I remember using those old Apples…

“No, no, no,” she said. “It’s not an old box-style computer—it was an early portable computer. They’re really…kind of sleek and green and had a little stylus and keyboard. It was a great piece of technology that didn’t make it into mainstream use. So we started developing Vital Signs on Palm computers in about 2001.”

Let’s rewind a bit. Vital Signs, according to their website and info sheet, “is an inquiry-based, field science education program that links students and scientists in the rigorous collection and analysis of essential environmental data. Innovative technology, relevant content, and critical partnerships create an authentic science learning experience for students, a distributed data gathering network for scientists, and a statewide community of teachers, students, and scientists collaborating to learn about and steward aquatic ecosystems.”

Basically, Vital Signs is focused on giving students firsthand experience of being scientists in the field. The environmental data that students collect will be used by students and scientists—real, professional scientists—in their own research. How will Vital Signs do this? One advantage the program has is its geographic location: Maine. All seventh and eighth grade students in Maine have their very own laptops—and not just any laptops mind you, but laptops made by Apple, those cute white Macbooks with the sheen still on their covers. How did they score those? It starts with a governor who had a vision for revolutionizing education.

I read somewhere that the [laptops] are funded by either the state or the Marine Institute…

“The state. The program was started six years ago. Then Governor Angus King was nearing the end of his final term. He wanted to leave a legacy that would position Maine for success in the 21st century. He started thinking about technology in schools. He asked Seymour Papert, ‘how many computers do I need to put in schools to make a difference? If every school had a classroom full of computers is that enough? If every school had three classrooms full of computers, is that enough?’ Papert replied, ‘it really doesn’t matter how many computers you put in the classrooms unless each student has their own.’ Governor King took a budget surplus and made the first round of the Maine Learning Technology Initiative happen.” (Maine was also the first state with high speed internet access to every library and every school.)

So is it all seventh and eighth graders?

“All seventh and eighth graders and their teachers. It actually started with the teachers first, which was critical to the program’s success. Teachers got their computers a year before their students. Governor King had the insight to get teachers involved in the administration of the project. The woman he hired to run it, Bette Manchester, had worked as a teacher and as a principal. She had the insight that when you take a classroom where traditionally the teacher has been the one with all the knowledge and their job has been to impart that knowledge to their students, and you give all the students their own high speed, connected laptops, you’ve given all the students access to more information than could possibly be in their teacher’s head and this had the potential to flip classrooms upside down. So how [do] you help teachers make that fundamental transition in their role, especially given that teachers often have a different relationship with technology than their students do? There’s often more fear, there’s often less willingness to try things, there’s often more fear about being wrong and doing something that’s going to mess it up. So this is where Bette began.”

So the whole point of Vital Signs is first of all to get students used to technology…

The New York Times ran a much-discussed piece this week on open science and our colleague Karim Lakhani at the Harvard Business School. John Wilbanks was with Lakhani at OSCON when the story broke, speaking at a forum on participatory cultures.

The piece gives a tantalizing glimpse of the potential for open science. With a foundation in a shared legal and technical framework, we could scale initiatives like the ones Lakhani has identified, with the Web itself functioning as an innovation engine for science.

That was the impetus behind the open science workshop we held last week in Barcelona in conjunction with ESOF 2008. We’ve now published our recommendations [PDF] for foundational principles to help foster the growth of open science across the globe — a way to connect and empower the people and organizations using open approaches to accelerating discovery. It provides definitions for four pillars of open science: open access to literature, access to research materials, open data and open cyberinfrastructure.

“We have to look hard at the foundations of science on the network and advocate ceaselessly for the necessary upgrades — to science as well as the network — that will allow us to get millions of new eyes on science, asking millions of new questions,” writes Wilbanks in a post on his blog at Nature Network. “Until that happens, we won’t really have a digital science culture. We’ll have simply made the old problems into digital problems.”

We’re grateful to all of the participants for joining us and helping to make the workshop a success. Special thanks go to Dr. Cameron Neylon, who not only participated but also blogged the event at Science in the open, sharing his insights with the community at large. Here are links to his notes, along with a few brief excerpts:

• Policy and technology for e-science: a forum on open science policy: “James Boyle (Duke Law School, Chair of board of directors of Creative Commons, Founder of Science Commons) gave a wonderful talk (40 minutes, no slides, barely taking breath) where his central theme was the relationship between where we are today with open science and where international computer networks were in 1992. He likened making the case for open science today with that of people suggesting in 1992 that the networks would benefit from being made freely accessible, freely useable, and based on open standards.”
• Policy for open science: the wrap-up session: “The benefits of the open web come from the explosion of people actually using a computer network. We must think of the users of an open-architected science [having] the same potential for explosion. “
• Policy for open science — reflections on the workshop: “The workshop that I’ve reported on over the past few days was both positive and inspiring. There is a real sense that the ideas of Open Access and Open Data are becoming mainstream. As several speakers commented, within 12-18 months it will be very unusual for any leading institution not to have a policy on Open Access to its published literature. …Open Data remains further behind, both with respect to policy and awareness. … We need to look critically at different models [for building a commons], what they are good for, how they work.”

We’re hoping to continue the fruitful conversations started the Barcelona workshop. If you’re interested in joining us, send us an email to let us know.

Nota: il CC Festival e' un evento indipendente che non coinvolge ne' Creative Commons ne' il gruppo di lavoro Creative Commons Italia, come evidenziato anche nel "disclaimer" riportato sul sito dell'evento.

SM4X
in collaborazione con AVALON COOP SOC ONLUS
con il patrocinio della REGIONE EMILIA ROMAGNA
presenta
CC-FESTIVAL 2008
24-25-26 luglio, PARMA
christian biasco, yue
cyberdread, sistema liquido, drop alive, convergence
amélie, fluydo, black era, il maniscalco maldestro
+
incontri, presentazioni, seminari

Just a quick reminder that CC Salon NYC is happening tomorrow night. July’s salon will feature presentations from Wikia Search, Livable Streets Network, and a special performance from comedian Max Silvestri (of Gabe + Max’s Internet Thing).

Here are the details:

Wednesday, July 23rd from 7-10pm
The Open Planing Project
349 W. 12th St., 1st Floor

We’ll have free (as in beer) beer sponsored by Brooklyn Brewery. Don’t miss this great opportunity to be a part of the CC community in NYC and learn about some great projects and people thinking about the issues we care about.

Follow the event via Upcoming.org and RSVP via the Facebook event or e-mailing me - fred [at] creativecommons.org

Check out Videolectures.net. It has a wealth of videos with speeches, lectures and presentation on lots of interesting topics. Refreshingly, there is a lot of European stuff and the service is thus not so america-centric as most similar services. And all content is released under a creative commons licens.

Technorati Tags:
videolectures.net

(foto@El Conde!) Mediateca Musical es un sitio web sin fines de lucro y tiene por misión contribuir al mejoramiento de la calidad de la educación escolar en el área artístico-musical, a partir del uso de las nuevas tecnologías. En su web puedes encontrar audios, videos, textos, etc.,  de uso libre y gratuito para cualquiera que los necesite. 

Jamglue - featured commoner, remix contest holder extraordinaire - have delivered again with two awesome remix contests, one featuring rap-duo Kidz in the Hall and the other solo-artist Tyga. Both contests feature song stems for both artists’ current singles - “Driving Down the Block” and “Coconut Juice” respectively - released under a CC BY-NC-SA license. As we have noted before, by using CC licences Jamglue allows artists to open up their content to fans in a way that not only allows for positive interaction and creation, but also maintains the commercial interests of the artists at hand.

Unfortunately, the entry date for the Tyga contest has passed (which doesn’t mean you can’t remix it - just not for a prize). Entries for The Kidz in the Hall contest are due by August 17, giving you plenty of time to rearrange and pick apart their music, crafting your own creation in the process.

Dans les jardins de Monte-Carlo | No known copyright restrictions.

Two more amazing photo collections have been added to the continuously growing Flickr Commons, one coming from the George Eastman House and the other from Le Bibliothèque de Toulouse. Both groups’ photostreams are absolutely amazing to pour over, offering stunning images from the turn of the century that are all released in the public domain. Again, in case you have missed any of our other posts on the Flickr Commons, some info below:

The key goals of The Commons are to firstly give you a taste of the hidden treasures in the world’s public photography archives, and secondly to show how your input and knowledge can help make these collections even richer. You’re invited to help describe the photographs you discover in The Commons on Flickr, either by adding tags or leaving comments

The rest of the institutions on the Flickr Commons have all recently added new photos as well, increasing the worth of an already phenomenal resource.

Last week we shared the news about research Melanie Dulong de Rosnay has been conducting on the complexities of opening access to scientific data. The research has now been published over at Nature Precedings, in the form of a paper entitled, Check Your Data Freedom: A Taxonomy to Assess Life Science Database Openness.

“Molecular biology data are subject to terms of use that vary widely between databases and curating institutions,” writes de Rosnay in the abstract. “[This paper] builds upon research led by Science Commons demonstrating why open data and the freedom to integrate facilitate innovation and how this openness can be achieved. … [Most terms of use for databases] are not harmonized, [are] difficult to understand and impose controls that prevent others from effectively reusing data.”

To address the problem, the paper proposes a “checklist for data openness…to assist database curators who wish to make their data more open to make sure they do so.”

That’s not all. Our outstanding research assistant, recent MIT graduate Shirley Fung (S.B. 2007 and M.Eng 2008), helped de Rosnay with the project and has published a website that lets anyone explore and evaluate the legal and technical openness of the sample set of scientific databases (and submit more databases). Here’s a look at the home page:

Find Open Data Browse a list of databases compliant with the Science Commons Open Access Data Protocol	Browse Policies View databases categorized by their technical and legal accessibility regimes
Classified Databases Find all the databases classified by the project. You also may want to use the “Browse Policies” section for a specific kinds of databases	Submit Policy Use the questionnaire to submit a database policy to our system

If you have questions about the project, let us know.

Lucas Gonze:

Now consider that internet music businesses have to compete for investment capital with internet businesses that don’t pay royalties. Craigslist, Google search, and Twitter do nothing but move bits around!

Lastly, returning to the conversation about netlabels the other day, I want to point out that netlabel and other net-native music doesn’t have a lot of listeners, but as long as it stays clear of copyright infringement it can have economics just like Craiglist, Twitter etc. Maybe not at that scale, but definitely at that level of profitability.

And I know that people on the business side of internet music see net-native music as a joke. That’s right big shots, I’m talking to you specifically. Make free and legal music popular enough for your traffic to scale and you can have the grail — an internet music product that makes sense as a business. Which is exactly what Phlow-Magazine is working on by slicking up the presentation of those sources.

Victor Stone comments on the above post:

Maybe not at that scale, but definitely at that level of profitability.

Does anybody, anywhere doubt that at some point

1) a ‘net native’ artist will actual break. iow, do we really think Brad Sucks has hit the ceiling?

2) when that artist breaks without any “industry” juice, not even sxsw, the margins will be ginormous, the flood gates will open.

These things are stupendously obvious things to me. Does anybody out there question these certainties?

Relatedly, Gonze posting on the cc-community list:

In reality, the benefit [of allowing commercial use] is to maximize upsales by empowering businesses to build support systems for your music.

I highly recommend following the blogs of Gonze and Stone if you want to know where ‘net native’ (and eventually most) music is going.

Ethan Zuckerman writes:

Under US law, pretty much anything you write down is copyrighted. Scrawl an original note on a napkin and it’s protected until 70 years after your death.

Note: None of this post should be taken as criticism of Zuckerman. I’m just using his sentence as a foil. He is a great blogger, the above is a great post of his, which furthermore talks about the great work of some of my colleagues…

In what sense is the hypothetical scrawl above “protected” by copyright? A scrawl might be protected by a glass case or digitization, or even (somewhat remotely) by secure property rights in napkins, glass cases, and computers.

No, copyright restricts the ability of others to use representations of the scrawl legally, without obtaining permission from the scrawler or a party the scrawler has transferred this right to censor to.

Which brings us to another inaccurate phrasing, which has many variations, all along the lines of “copyright is the right to … a copyrighted work” where the ellipsis are filled by words like “publish”, “distribute”, or “perform”. Not true! Copyright is not required to have the right to publish a work, or public domain works would be illegal to publish. Instead, copyright is the right to legally restrict others from publishing, distributing, performing works.

So use of the term ‘copyright protection’ (2,930,000 Google hits) instead of ‘copyright restriction’ (19,300 Google hits) is a peeve of mine and seeing copyright equated with censorship a small joy.

As I described before, ccMixter is up for sale. You can read a Q&A about the RFP here. Get your proposals in.

The Creative Commons licene engine has gone through several iterations, the most recent being a Zope 3 / Grok application. This has actually been a great implementation for us¹, but since the day it was deployed there’s been a warning in README.txt:

If you get a UnicodeDecodeError from the cc.engine (you'll see this if it's
running in the foreground) when you try to access the http://host:9080/license/
then it's likely that the install of python you are using is set to use ASCII
as it's default output.  You can change this to UTF-8 by creating the file
/usr/lib/python<version>/sitecustomize.py and adding these lines:
  import sys
  sys.setdefaultencoding("utf-8")

This always struck me as a bit inelegant—having to muck with something outside my application directory. After all, this belief that the application should be self-contained is the reason I use zc.buildout and share Jim’s belief in the evil of the system Python. Like a lot of inelegant things, though, it never rose quite to the level of annoyance needed to motivate me to do it right.

Today I was working on moving the license engine to a different server² and ran into this problem again. I decided to dig in and see if I could track it down. In fact I did track down the initial problem—I was making a comparison between an encoded Unicode string and without specifying an explicit codec to use for the decode. Unfortunately once I fixed that I found it was turtles all the way down.

Turns out the default Zope 3 page template machinery uses StringIO to collect the output. StringIO uses, uh, strings—strings with the default system encoding. Reading the module documentation, it would appear that mixing String and Unicode input in your StringIO will cause this sort of issue.

Andres suggested marking my templates as UTF-8 XML using something like:

 < ?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>

but even after doing this and fixing the resulting entity errors, there’s still obviously some 8 bit Strings leaking into the output. In conversations on IRC the question was then asked: “is there a reason you don’t want a reasonable system wide encoding if your locale can support it?”

I guess not³.

UPDATE Martijn has a tangentially related post which sheds some light on why Python does/should ship with ascii as the default codec. At least people smarter than me have problems with this sort of thing, too.

---

¹ Yes, I may be a bit biased—I wrote the Zope3/Grok implementation. Of course, I wrote the previous implementation, too, and I can say without a doubt it was… “sub-optimal”.

² We’re doing a lot of shuffling lately to complete a 32 to 64 bit conversion; see the CC Labs blog post for the harrowing details.

³ So the warning remains.

Hier ein kurzes Party-Update: Es gibt eine Update-Party!

Anlässlich der bevorstehenden Freigabe der deutschen 3.0 Version der Creative-Commons-Lizenzen wird es am Freitag, den 25. Juli einen besonderen Abend im breiPott geben, der ersten echten Netlabel-Bar Deutschlands in der Skalitzer Straße 81 im Berliner Stadtteil Kreuzberg. Unter dem Titel CC Update 3.0 gibt es ab 20 Uhr freie Musik von DJ Cotumo, Visuals von servando und einen speziellen Drink allein für diesen Abend, den ccMixter. Gegen 23 Uhr ist eine Performance von servando und Dr.Nojoke geplant, ein Live Mashup von Sounds und Visuals. Es lohnt sich also, spätestens dann vor Ort zu sein. Der Eintritt ist frei (Spenden natürlich gerne gesehen :).

[Flyer: Bearbeitung des Fotos "pregnant silhouette" von mahalie@flickr.com durch John H. Weitzmann 2008 unter http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/de/legalcode]

June slipped by before we knew what was happening, so this is a two-month update. These past two months have seen ccLearn giving a presentation at CSU Sacramento relating open education and universal design, attending the first CC tech summit, and plowing along on the various projects already underway. Also, we welcomed a summer intern, Grace Armstrong, who is coordinating with CCi and open education leaders in Latin America and beyond on holding meetings and identifying promising collaborative opportunities. More on this later this summer.

We have also released a great mapping tool for identifying upcoming open educational events, now found on ccLearn’s home page. What is unique about this tool is that the data are derived from a wiki-table, and anyone can contribute or edit event info. We encourage you to add any events relevant to open education that you may be aware of. We intend to re-purpose this tool for other mapping exercises as well, and since it is open source, like everything Creative Commons builds, you can also use it for your own mapping needs. One idea that has already been discussed is “mapping the open educational space” at the upcoming iSummit… this exercise could take many forms, and the open, collaborative nature of the wiki allows for a lot of creativity in how the map takes shape.

Look for other developments and research projects to come to fruition in the coming month. The days are getting shorter here in the Northern Hemisphere, but the fire season has just begun.

-Ahrash

“then you win” is an initiative aiming to release a series of documentaries that focus on international development issues under a spectrum of CC licenses. The documentaries are produced by Loin de l’Œil, a voluntary association in France, and will be released under Yooook, an open content platform project under development run by Camille Harang. You can read more about the project here.

With active donations, “then you win” will move these documentaries from All Rights Reserved into more open licenses - from BY-NC-ND to BY-NC-SA to BY-SA. The more money donated to the project, the more open these documentaries become. The hope is that with a more open license (the project is already powered by a suite of open source solutions) the documentaries will gain more exposure, greatly increasing the impact they are able to achieve.

Els propers dies 18, 19 i 20 de juliol, el Null Hacklab i l'Associació Musico-Cultural de l'Escorxador organitzen les II Jornades de Programari Lliure i Societat en Xarxa de Cerdanyola del Vallés, anomenades aquest any Hackparade. Durant 3 dies es realitzaran activitats centrades en la creació musical amb programari lliure, ...

Predlog komisarja Charlie-ja McCreevy-ja o podaljšanju trajanja sorodnih pravic izvajalcev iz 50 na 95 let, o katerem smo že pisali je dobil nove dimenzije, ko je enak predlog dne 16.7.2008 izdala Evropska komisija.

preberi več

May 29 we announced that we are accepting proposals for a new home for ccMixter, the innovative remix-oriented music community that Creative Commons has run since late 2004. The Request For Proposals was covered many places, including Advertising Age, Boing Boing, and WIRED as well as discussed on the ccMixter forums. Proposals are due July 29 and must be emailed to ccmixter-rfp@creativecommons.org. Questions are welcome at the same address.

We’ve received numerous questions since posting the RFP, which we’ve distilled into the Q&A below.

Before getting to the Q&A, check out (or come back to) some cool ccMixter and related developments over the last month: new site features galore, new developer features, a call for remixes from Shannon Hurley, a new weekly show featuring MC Jack in the Box’s ccMixter picks and of course lots of great new music.

ccMixter RFP Q&A

Why is CC doing this?

This is answered clearly (if dryly) in the RFP (emphasis added):

ccMixter.org was launched by CC in November 2004 to demonstrate legal mixing and reuse of music content, one area in which CC licenses have found firm footing and support. CC believes that ccMixter.org has fulfilled its initial mission of concretely demonstrating “legal reuse.” However, running a community music site is not one of CC’s core competencies, and accordingly, CC’s Board of Directors has decided that ccMixter should be transitioned to another person or entity with the necessary resources and expertise for ccMixter to continue to grow and reach its full potential.

In other words, we think ccMixter has the potential to “blow up” — in the right hands.

Does CC own all IP contained in proposals?

No. Section 3.2(c) of the RFP says, “All RFP responses, supporting materials, and other documentation submitted with responses will become the property of CC.” Our intent is not that CC become the owner or assignee of any intellectual property conceptualized or contained in a proposal response, only that CC needs to retain a record and copy of everything that’s submitted (for audit purposes, etc.).

What did Lessig really mean by “free”, “no ads”, “.org”, and “no variances”?

Appendix B to the RFP restates (verbatim) the criteria articulated by Larry Lessig for spinning out ccMixter to a new home.

“Free” means the entity does have to provide current ccMixter services at no charge, but does not prohibit it from providing “pro” services to users at another, related site. The related site can be linked to from the ccMixter website.

“No ads” means the free ccMixter site cannot have ads.

“.org” means the site will be served from a “.org” domain, but more importantly, have a “no ads” face, though the site content could be served from other domains as well, consistent with the license(s) the content falls under.

“No variances” will be considered from the spirit of the principles Larry articulated, but admittedly those principles leave some room for interpretation. We may need to refine those points in negotiation depending on the ideas contained in the proposals. But the over-arching and guiding intent is to ensure the ccMixter website remains a community environment where remixers can do their thing, legally, and not suffer abuse or feel that the essence of their community or the terms governing their participation have changed. We’re happy to review proposal ideas and drafts and provide feedback on whether the direction envisioned is tenable. This isn’t a matter of throwing one over the transom and hoping it isn’t immediately disqualified … if you’re interested in submitting a proposal, let’s talk.

What is the activity level of the site?

Probably the best window into how the site is used is on the ccMixter stats page.

Over the last 30 days, ccMixter has 333,871 pageviews in 58,158 visits from 39,234 visitors (according to Google Analytics).

Alexa, Compete.com, and Quantcast provide publicly available traffic indicators.

How much does it cost to run ccMixter?

The technical answer is that the site currently runs on one box, currently hosted at ServerBeach for $229/month, including bandwidth (2000GB/month). A <$10/month Dreamhost account is used to help with bandwidth. The other cost, much larger, has been its people. That basically means Victor (who has to date performed services at well below market rate) and a small amount of legal/finance/hr/management overhead from CC.

All this said, the question we encourage proposers to be thinking about is not “what does it cost CC, a non profit, to run ccMixter today?” The circumstances of our development and maintenance of the site in its current form should only inform, not drive or be relied upon in determining, costs going forward.

The question you really should be asking is “what would ccMixter cost [your name here] to run?”, which will be largely determined by your vision for its future.

The reason is simple. For almost every case, the current cost to CC does not translate to what ccMixter would cost somebody because the CC infrastructure of lawyers, accountants, tech staff, etc. would all need to replicated. And the “market value” of the very valuable work Victor performs at a cut rate for CC almost certainly will not translate to your real world scenario.

So the answer to this inquiry really depends in what kind of infrastructure you have at your organization, and even more importantly on your vision and plans for the site.

…

Remember, proposals are due July 29 to ccmixter-rfp@creativecommons.org! Please read the RFP carefully if you are considering submitting.

Thanks to The Wired Campus, I stumbled across this nifty digital copyright tool developed by the American Library Association’s Copyright Advisory Network (in the Office for Information Technology Policy). The ALA Copyright Advisory Network is dedicated to educating librarians and others on copyright, something that is no simple matter, since, “with copyright, there are no definitive answers.”

Check out the digital copyright slider. The tool itself is pretty simple. You basically slide the arrow up and down the years starting from “Before 1923″. The boxes on the left (Permission Needed? and Copyright Status/Term) tell you whether a work is still copyrighted or whether it’s now in the public domain, free for you to use and repurpose any way you like. Unfortunately, actually figuring out the copyright status of a work isn’t so simple as dragging your mouse—most of the years seem to be marked by a fuzzy period of “Maybe”. For example, say John Doe wrote and published a poem between 1964-1977 and you are able to find a copyright notice—you still can’t really figure out whether the copyright still applies. And if you can’t find a copyright notice? Well, you just don’t know then either. The same answer (don’t know) seems to apply to a lot of years here…

Props to the ALA for illuminating the incredible complications in US copyright (yeah, that’s right—this sliding scale also only applies to works published within the US). And double props for licensing their tool CC BY-NC-SA. I leave you now with this thought:

Photo licensed CC BY-NC by Nancy

Prominent Free Culture activist, ROFLCon-ite, and close CC friend Dean Jansen blogged recently about Archive.org’s new absolutely amazingly easy-to-use new interface for uploading media. As he writes,

This is great news, as Archive.org has historically been notoriously difficult to publish to. I’m encouraging them to go one step further and add easily accessible RSS links (with media enclosures) for users, categories, searches and so forth. This will turn Archive.org into an amazing free 1-stop (non-profit) publishing platform for independent podcasters and video bloggers alike.

Very cool. It currently only works for things less than 100 MB, and for anything larger, there’s the Creative Commons Publisher Tool. Check it out!

3 weeks ago we had an amazing experience putting on the CC Salon LA. Presenters Curt Smith and Monk Turner spoke eloquently about why they have used CC and it seemed a shame that their words were constricted solely to the space of FOUND Gallery. Thankfully we recorded the presentations and, after editing for brevity, we were able to post them online. Check them out below:

Curt Smith’s Presentation:

• vimeo
• blip.tv
• youtube

Monk Turner’s Presentation:

• vimeo
• blip.tv
• youtube

All the videos are released under a CC BY license and you can download them in their raw format at either vimeo or blip.tv. Similarly, we will be posting the unedited presentations to Archive.org in the coming days. You can also see a Flickr photoset of the night.

CC Salons are one of the best ways we have found for people to better understand how CC works and what we do - hopefully by taking these presentations online, they can educate an even wider audience.

Stefan Gompel wrote this little update on a bad policy proposal:

The intention of the European Commission to extend the term of protection in sound recordings is taking more serious proportions, now that they have formally adopted a proposal to that effect.

See the press release announcing the proposal for a term extension, and also the proposal itself, at:
<<http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/copyright/term-protection/term-protection_en.htm>>

The proposal ignores all the empirical evidence that hitherto has been brought forward recommending the Commission not to proceed towards a term extension. These include two independent reports, the one written by the Institute for Information Law for the Commission’s DG Internal Market, the other written by the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law for the UK Gowers Review. For those of you interested in reading these reports, here are the links:

(1)     Institute for Information Law (IViR), ‘The Recasting of Copyright & Related Rights for the Knowledge Economy’, report to the European Commission, DG Internal Market, November 2006, online available at: <<http://www.ivir.nl/publications/other/IViR_Recast_Final_Report_2006.pdf>>, p. 83-137.(2)     Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law (CIPIL), University of Cambridge, ‘Review of the Economic Evidence Relating to an Extension of Copyright in Sound Recordings’, online available at: <<http://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk/policy_documents/>>.

For those of you who have little time, there is also an article on the matter (to which I contributed) which gives a pretty good overview of the different arguments against a term extension. See:

N. Helberger, N. Dufft, S.J. van Gompel & P.B. Hugenholtz, ‘Never Forever: Why Extending the Term of Protection for Sound Recordings is a Bad Idea,’ E.I.P.R., 2008-5, p. 174-181, online available at:

<<http://www.ivir.nl/publications/helberger/EIPR_2008_5.pdf>>

Finally, some campaigns have been launched and statements issued opposing the proposal for a term extension. Amongst others, there are:

Creativity stifled? - Why copyright term extension for sound recordings is a very bad idea:
<<http://www.cippm.org.uk/publications/index.html>>

Campaign against term extension by EFF and Open Rights Group:
<<http://www.soundcopyright.eu/>>

EBLIDA Expert Group on Information Law
<<http://www.eblida.org/index.php?page=position-papers-and-statements-2>>

Evropska komisija je sprejela odločbo, s katero prepoveduje evropskim kolektivnim organizacijam, članicam mednarodne zveze kolektivnih organizacij CISAC, omejevanje konkurence z onemogočanjem ponujanja storitev avtorjem in komercalnim uporabnikom izven svojih nacionalnih teritorijev.

preberi več

Дигиталниот архив на македонскиот јазик (http://damj.manu.edu.mk/index.html) на Истражувачкиот центар за ареална лингвистика (http://www.manu.edu.mk/cal/cal.htm) на МАНУ (http://www.manu.edu.mk/),...

Ethan Zuckerman, the Berkman fellow who founded Geekcorps and co-leads Global Voices with Rebecca MacKinnon, has a nice piece today on our efforts to clear the legal hurdles blocking the integration of scientific databases, highlighting research by Melanie Dulong de Rosnay (see our post from earlier this week).

Writes Zuckerman at World Changing:

Creative Commons is a clever use of the copyright system intended to make it easier for people who want to, to share their work with others. Jonathan Coulton has used Creative Commons to enable an army of remixers and videomakers to produce promotional materials for his songs and albums. Authors like Dan Gillmor and Cory Doctorow have used Creative Commons to let people download, translate and make audio versions of their books. And Global Voices uses Creative Commons so that blogs and news sites can use our content without asking us for permission.

What about scientists?

[...]

Under US law, pretty much anything you write down is copyrighted. Scrawl an original note on a napkin and it’s protected until 70 years after your death. Facts, however, are another matter - they can’t be copyrighted. So while trivial but creative scribblings are copyrighted, unless you choose to release them into the public domain, the information painstakingly discovered about the human genome - DNA sequences, for instance - aren’t. But the containers they’re stored in - the databases they’re held in - can be copyrighted.

If I sound confused about this stuff, that’s because I am.

[...]

This question of complexity is what Melanie’s research has focused on. She looked at the terms of use for roughly 200 databases necessary for work in the life sciences. Evaluating the terms on all those databases, she discovered that only 7 met her stringent definitions of Open Access to data - these databases could be accessed without registration; they could be downloaded for local use; they could be incorporated into other works; they had clear, understandable terms of use. This last factor proved to be the most challenging. She spent hours reading these terms with other experts in the field and discovered that, a great deal of time, the experts disagreed on what was permitted under a specific agreement.

The reason this is important, Melanie explains, is that scientific research proceeds more quickly when researchers can share resources. But with databases encumbered by different, confusing legal protections, it can become a legal nightmare for researchers to do complex work building new tools that combine information from two databases in a novel way, for instance. And databases that are protected by access restrictions can be out of reach to scientists in developing nations who might not have the financial or technical resources to access them.

So how do you deal with the problem of conflicting terms of use for the “containers” of scientific data?

As Zuckerman points out, we initially offered advice aimed at helping database publishers figure out when it made sense to use Creative Commons licenses. But it was evident that this wouldn’t solve the problem.

After further research, Science Commons collaboratively developed and published the Protocol for Implementing Open Access Data, through which we recommend explicitly returning the data to the public domain, using legal tools like the CC0 waiver or the Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and License (ODC-PDDL).

If you’d like to learn more about the protocol, we encourage you to check out the FAQ or send us an email. We’re happy to answer any questions you may have.

Super cool video conversation site Seesmic just rolled out its most requested feature today, Creative Commons licensing of course! Seesmic added all 6 primary licenses as option and CC Attribution 3.0 as default license for videos uploaded. “This means you determine how other people can use your content. Your choices are now between six combinations of Creative Commons licenses, and “All Rights Reserved,” says Jeremy Vaught from Seesmic.